Grinding credits, getting better without even playing, and the KV-2

This week's #ShowdownSaturday tank is the KV-2 so I pulled mine out of the garage to have a few gos. And I was reminded why I rarely play it.

What's #ShowdownSaturday? 


It's huge, it's slow, and it's made of some sort of cardboard. I'm sure I'll do a tank review of it someday, but really...it can be a lot of fun but it's not a good tank. What it is, is a meme-maker. You've got a wonderful boomstick at the front, and a bit of Russian RNG and that's about it.

What that means is that in battle you trundle around the battlefield, constantly spotted, and absolutely everything pens you. For the minutes you're alive though, anything you can get a shot at, you can do big damage to.

In a Lakeville battle I hit a pixel shot on a T71 DA from about 500 meters. RASSHA! On Siegfried Line woe be to the T-43 who crossed the intersection in front of me. Took his last 600 health with a single shot.

But at the same time, I'm getting penned by an AMX ELC bis, an Easy 8, and just about everything else.

So while the KV-2 is fun to play on those occasions when you left-click on somebody, the long seconds (about 20 of them) in between can be pretty tedious.

"What's the best tank to grind credits in?"

I get this question a lot. The answer is...

<drumroll>

...the tank you play the best in. You grind the most credits when you have good games. The SkorpG is a good credit maker...unless you suck in it, can't hit any shots, and your teams lose a lot when you play it. The STRV S1 can be an amazing credit maker, especially if you're really good at it.

TDs and arty tend to do well at making credits because they're more likely to survive in games you win, so you don't have to pay as much in repair costs on the tanks. If you have a tank that plays on the front line you're more likely to get killed, even in wins, than if you play a tank that sits in the back (especially WAY in the back, right artys?) and just snipes. You still need to do fairly well, so just sitting on the redline eating Cheetos isn't going to be very successful, but if you can deal decent damage in a TD or arty, then that can be a good choice for credit grinding.

Last consideration for credit grinding - pick a tank with low shell cost. If you shoot only AP/HE and those shells are pretty cheap on your tank, you'll do better with credits. Shooting a lot of premium ammo, or choosing a tank where the AP shells are relatively expensive, is going to cost you.

So my advice is - pick the tank you play the best in, especially if it's a premium, run a credit booster if you've got one (and you should, if you're doing the scavenger hunt) and grind away!

Watching Streamers to Get Better

One of my best tips to getting better is to watch good players play. Whether it's on Twitch or YouTube find some good players - like Skill4LTU, Jerm, TruVoodoo, Overlord Prime, Guido1212 - and just watch them play and listen to their thought processes. Ask them questions if you're watching them live. Most of the good streamers LIKE to answer questions during their stream.

They're playing the same game you are, and pretty soon what you'll find is that the next time you load into a particular map, with a particular kind of tank, you'll have seen good players play that kind of tank, on that map, from that spawn, and you'll just instinctively take a similar approach to what they've done. You might not be as crisp - watching streamers isn't likely to make you an instant unicum - but at the very least it's a way to get a lot more "experience" vicariously and learn from people who are good.

If you can't tune in while they're streaming live most of them post recordings of their streams on Twitch and/or YouTube. You can watch hours of World of Tanks game-play (most of it good) on-demand, for free.

GLHF!

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